Fuckin' Igloo (TDDK week 2018)
by ttyphlosion
Summary: A select few heroes and sidekicks from the Creagency Hero Agency aim to take down a gang stationed in the basement of an inhabited apartment building. It goes great. D1: Warmth "To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt." -Madonna


This gang is more than a little frustrating.

For starters, their secret base is the unused basement of a very much used apartment building in one of the less well-off parts of the city. They also have a surprising amount of large-scale quirks in the hands of quirk users that have absolutely no problem taking down an inhabited building in the process of defeating the small group of heroes that had raided their quarters for drugs that aren't even _there _anymore.

They also have an old woman on their side with an ice quirk to match Shouto's. She's the tipping point from tense standoff to desperate free-for-all, having had tumbled down the stairs from the communal laundry room screaming in the middle of it and freezing the front and only line of police officers solid.

Izuku was lucky he wasn't dealing with her – Shouto was – but his foe was formidable in and of themself. They were shooting shimmery strings at their allies and apparently seizing control of them, and Izuku wouldn't be surprised if their name was Puppeteer. Since he was the fastest hero present, he was the one chasing them throughout the basement, avoiding their strings while they gradually let up with concise controls and started to just throw their fellow gang members between them and Izuku. It was a little sad to watch their growing desperation.

At least, it is, while he can watch them. Not long after he gets within grabbing distance of them, he's blasted into a support pillar by a formidable lump of ice. It pins him against it, thankfully not pushing him all the way through, but he feels something give in his chest and hopes to whatever fucking god there is that that doesn't pierce his lung.

Izuku looks up to see the old lady cackling her head off as Todoroki yells something indecipherable and sends an ice spike of his own to knock hers away from him while he himself charges at her with ruthless intent in his eyes and unrelenting flames arcing off his back and arm. His spike shatters the lady's spike, and Izuku realizes too late that he was a little higher off the ground than he initially thought. He hits the ground rolling and a small shard of ice splits the skin on his shoulderblade through his suit purely from the force. He rolls more times than he plans to, and doesn't stand up very smoothly. He trips over a large ice boulder and his foot doesn't feel good under his shoe armour.

The puppeteer seizes their opening as he scrambles to his feet, and shoots two strings at him. One embeds itself in his left elbow and the other in the front of his shoulder. They go deeper than he hoped they would, and because he'd appreciate keeping his elbow's tendons, he boosts himself with One For All for a leap straight for them. He doesn't know what he plans to do once he gets there, but they screech and – well, it seems that a bodyslam will do. Izuku, breathing hard, sits up, checks that they're still breathing but sufficiently passed out, and stands up to pull the strings out of his own body as carefully as he can manage with Jirou and Kaminari's voices in his ear yelling at each other about what exactly requires backup in this situation. His elbow bleeds profusely, he can feel it, but it seems that his elbow guard is soaking it up well. His shoulder's a little shallower of a wound, but it still stains his suit a bit.

Once he's sufficiently disconnected from the unconscious villain, he runs back out into the fray.

He runs to help Kaminari first, because he's less competent than Jirou and more likely to be the one that started the backup argument over the Creagency's comms and thus the one in need of assistance. He spots Todoroki on the way, debating for a hot second whether he should help him, but he was sort of on fire and holding his own on a rampage against an old lady in a knit cardigan that looked unnervingly similar to Sero's.

Only once he shows up and sees Kaminari's relieved, blood-splattered face as he runs into him and realizes he's there does he realize he could've given him a heads-up over the comms, but maybe he forgot his existed after Jirou and Kaminari got too distracted to yell at one another. Yaoyorozu might've broken it up, too. He hadn't been paying attention. But now, Kaminari's not paying attention, and the villain throws a rock at him. A big rock.

Izuku, who'd pretty much been cradling Kaminari in his arms, picks him up and lifts him over his head with a surge of strength from One For All to get him out of the rock's way. He intends to leap out of the way himself, but his sore foot has other plans. His not-sore foot kind of steps backward and leaves the sore one where it is, in the perfect place to get crushed by the rock.

_Fucking hell, that hurts. _

Izuku's not-sore foot doesn't step back far enough to support Kaminari's momentum, so Izuku falls backwards very fast. He bends his arms a bit and launches Kaminari away so he doesn't faceplant with the One For All aftereffects. His boot clips Izuku's middle finger on his way away, wrenching it a bad direction with the unfortunate help of his glove's traction. It doesn't break, but he knows it won't feel good for a while. He also hits his head on the ground.

Kicking the rock off his definitely broken foot and shattering it, Izuku stands up again, expecting the rock-thrower to come at him while he's down, but all he sees is their back as they flee up the laundry room's stairs. He looks around for Jirou and calls to Kaminari, "You okay back there?"

"I think I broke this guy's nose, so, yeah?" He says. Far away, Jirou's triple-wielding her ear jacks and one of Yaoyorozu's swords against what looks like a zebra mutant type, while Yaoyorozu, not far off, is crouching under a net trying to ward off a swarm of bees that Izuku does _not_ remember being there when they stormed the place. He turns around to see what the heck Kaminari means.

He's standing innocently over a beefy bald guy flat on his back with the entire bottom half of his face coated in blood. He looks to be passed out. Midoriya realizes, "Did I throw you into that dude?"

"Sure did. Nice aim, by the way."

"Sweet," Izuku says, having very much not known the bald man had been there.

He looks down and sees his shoe very bloody. He liked those shoes. He momentarily mourns them and makes a note to himself to talk to Mei about better shoe armour.

Suddenly, there's a large gust of wind. "Hello, kids!" Izuku whips around to see the old lady skating on a path of ice like one of the original American superheroes, Frozone. Shouto doesn't do that often, no matter how many times Izuku tells him how much fun it probably is and about the benefits of enhanced agility in an urban environment. He notices the lady's headed straight for him and Kaminari.

Izuku makes to leap forward and defend Kaminari, but falls straight on his face. He really needs to stop falling in this basement. He hears a hearty crackle and is somewhat reassured for their safety, but he was too quick to assume. When he pushes himself up on his good arm enough to see what's going on, he can't even see Kaminari. He briefly wonders where he went, but then the old ice lady propels herself backwards, away from Izuku. He then wonders why _she_ did _that,_ but Shouto careens past where she'd been standing on his own, rougher platform of ice, and pretty much crumples to the ground a bit away from Izuku. His flames sputter out for a moment, and Izuku's stomach drops. He heaves himself up and crawls closer to him.

"Shouto," he says, because there aren't any cameras and he doesn't need to call him by his hero name. He doesn't know why. Maybe just for acknowledgement of familiarity.

Shouto startles, though, like he hadn't noticed Izuku was there. He's breathing hard, and his suit is starting to frost over where his fire hasn't touched it. He gets up like his bones are rattling beneath his skin. "Are you okay?" He wheezes, because the fight of their fellow heroes is quiet in the distance and since the old lady backed off it seems like they're alone.

"No, but I can still fight." Izuku says. He looks around to check their surroundings again, and when he turns his head back to him, Shouto's holding out his hand for him to take. He stares at it for a moment, then grins up at him. "You don't look great yourself. How can I trust you won't drop me?"

Shouto takes that as an invitation to roll his eyes and forcibly yank Izuku to his feet by his hand. When something in his foot grinds against itself his knee buckles a bit and he clamps his other hand on Shouto's shoulder. They both make little pained noises, and Izuku can't help but laugh. Shouto's eyes flick around behind Izuku's back all the while, and that's something he can really take solace in.

"Sorry, might drag you down a bit." He remarks. He peeks over Shouto's shoulder himself. "We should probably look for Kaminari."

"Kaminari?" Shouto blinks.

Izuku's mouth quirks a bit. "Yeah, I was with him before the fairy grandmother showed up."

"Godmother," Shouto halfheartedly corrects, readjusting Izuku's hand on his shoulder so it didn't dig into his skin in the same place. He begins to lead them around the nearest surviving support column.

"Are you kidding me? Did you see that lady's wrinkles? Her _cardigan?"_

"In this house, we love and respect the Tape Hero: Cellophane."

Izuku chokes. After a second he bursts into boisterous laughter, and he _cannot_ stop.

There's a burst of static over Izuku's comm as they walk, and then comes Jirou's indignant voice. "I can hear you all the way from over here, _without_ the comms! Stop fucking around! We still have bees!"

Izuku tries to wisen up quickly, covering his mouth. "S-Sorry, Jirou."

Shouto looks at Izuku weird, then, his smile fading. He reaches for his ear and pulls his hand away without anything on it. He rubs his fingers, then puts them back to his ear and when he pulls them away again, between them is a familiar plastic shape of a melted comm. He's melted his earpiece. Again. They really needed to find another mode of communication for Shouto to use, because this was _not_ working.

This time, Izuku wisely muffles his snorts into Shouto's shoulder.

Because he has his face and his arm and both hands and – yeah, okay, quite a bit of him pressed up against Shouto while they walk, he feels when he suddenly stiffens and his body temperature plummets, whether it be intentional or not. Izuku looks up, head back in the game.

"Shit, there he is." Shouto says. He hastily untangles himself and speeds up to a jog to reach Kaminari's still form on the ground. He kneels next to him and checks his pulse first. After a moment, he relaxes. Izuku, having also sped up but nowhere near as efficiently as his roommate, stops.

"He okay?"

"As far as I can tell," Shouto reports, "his breathing's steady. He'll be okay." He stands up, noting pieces of broken glass embedded in the carpet around him, seemingly from earlier in the fight. "We should probably leave him where he is, with that glass there."

Izuku's mood dims further. "Yeah. Let's go find the ice grandma."

It doesn't take very long. She shows up very soon, leaping out from behind a column and throwing out her arm extravagantly to freeze them solid in a very compact dome of ice. Shouto had been listening to whatever Izuku had been telling him, something he doesn't even remember, so he doesn't react as swiftly as he could have. It takes a half second too long of the sound of more and more layers being applied to the outside of the dome by the woman for him to react and burst into flames. Izuku wisely detaches from his shoulder, that he had been using for support, and hits the ground so Shouto doesn't have to worry about him being in the way. He shoots him a grateful look and turns up the heat a few notches, eyes dutifully fixed on the rapidly melting and fortifying dome above them and his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Izuku watches his face in quiet awe as water drips to the carpet. His roommate is very beautiful.

The dome grows in size, and so do Shouto's flames, but it doesn't seem to get any thinner. His fists clench in what Izuku assumes to be frustration, but when he looks to his face, he sees how white his skin is going.

Oh, shit. Quirk exhaustion.

By this point, the air in the dome had become very dry and hot, every molecule of moisture that used to hang suspended joined with the melted walls gushing onto the floor in puddles. There was little chance Shouto would be able to switch to cold and make a spike to bust out.

It was very bad, and Yaoyorozu seemed to agree.

"Deku! Tell Thermafrost to turn off his flames! The dome's reached the ceiling, and if he melts through it he's going to damage the building further!" The yelled instructions seem to jolt Izuku into action. He gets up, his teal suit dripping pink water, and shuffles closer to his roommate's feet. His flames really are roaring.

"Okay," he wheezes to Yaoyorozu, and then louder, "Shouto, stop!" He grabs his friend's boot and jostles his leg thoroughly.

He might not seem to adknowledge Izuku shaking his leg like a fifth grader with a maraca, but he certainly shuts off his flames.

And crumples into a heap on the ground.

"He melted his comm again, didn't he?" Yaoyorozu's voice says, sounding a little calmer now that the building's safety wasn't at stake anymore.

Izuku, holding off answering for a moment, rolls Shouto over and checks his pulse to find it hammering against his fingers even though he's out cold. "Yeah. What's the status out there? How'd you know about Shouto's flames?"

"Thermafrost," Yaoyorozu dutifully corrects him. Like Tenya, she absolutely always uses her friends' hero names while on the job, and constantly encourages the others to do so, even when nothing was being recorded or filmed for the public or by the public. "Me and Jack finished up, and found your ice woman. She's just now been apprehended."

"The police are finished evacuating the civilians?" Izuku asks, hopeful. He looks back up at the dome's ceiling, then the walls. Yaoyorozu and his friends were right out there. They could get him and Shouto out – especially Shouto. He definitely needed an ambulance with this level of quirk exhaustion. Izuku curses himself for not stopping him sooner. He should have noticed how drained he was, or done something as simple as remembering how tall the ceiling was.

"No," Yaoyorozu says, and Izuku closes his eyes. Okay. "Jack just used her spare cuffs. We weren't careful enough with the support columns. The building's unstable, so the evacuation efforts have slowed. We need to be careful down here."

Izuku looks at Shouto's sleeping face. It isn't as peaceful as it had been last week when he'd found him passed out on the couch with Bob Marley with subtitles playing on his phone in his lap. He can think of someone else who has to be more careful. "So, that means I can't just punch my way out?" He asks.

"No, Deku, you cannot punch your way out. Not this time." Yaoyorozu sighs, near fondly.

The building takes that moment of silence after her words as an opening to make a couple scary noises. Like creaking, grinding, and rumbling. Oh, he can feel the rumbling, too. That's not very nice.

The rumbling grows, and another sound he can hear is the yells and exclamations of people above him on higher floors. Every higher floor. It sends a chill down his spine. The rumbling doesn't stop, and at its peak, he hears – and feels – a very large piece of something falling into place.

Or out of place.

Everything's twice as loud with Yaoyorozu's comm echoing every creak and groan.

Izuku reaches for Shouto with trembling fingers and pulls him into his lap protectively. He doesn't exactly fit, because he's, like, person sized, but it's the thought that counts. Izuku pulls his feet under him, however much it hurts, and gets ready to move should their dome, or the building, collapse.

"Yaoyorozu," Izuku says, "how is it?"

"We –" Yaoyorozu speaks, but halts. "There are cracks in the ceiling. I'll… I'll make some supports." There's a quieter, "Here, Jack, hold this –" and then nothing but background noise.

Until he hears the ceiling fall and the dome makes a loud thud.

"Please tell me you guys found Kaminari," Izuku's voice wavers.

Yaoyorozu's voice is strained. "Yes, we did. We left him where he was, because of the glass – Jack, how many?" A pause. "Okay, please… please go and get him, be careful. And keep checking. I love you." Izuku nearly starts crying, not because that was anything new, she always said that to Jirou while they were on missions – but because he can't hear Jirou's answers and that means she's lost her comm and subsequently in the dark until she reaches Kaminari. Izuku doesn't remember how far away he was. Anything could happen.

"Please tell me this fucking ice dome isn't holding up the building." Izuku says with his eyes closed, hopelessly. He curls into Shouto, and notices that the air is very cold.

"I can't," comes Yaoyorozu's expected answer, but he has other concerns. Shouto's cold too, and on the wrong side. He gasps sharply and rechecks his breath, to find that it hasn't slowed by much.

"Shit. Shit, Shouto–" Izuku says, grunting and dragging his limp form over to the driest patch of carpet, in the middle of the dome. He sets down Shouto and starts vigorously rubbing up and down his arms. He has goosebumps on his left side.

That's bad.

"Yaoyorozu."

"Yeah, Deku?"

"Please tell the police escorts to hurry up. I need to smash my way out of here. Shouto needs the paramedics, and soon."

"Shouto? Is he okay?" _No, what did you think?_ "What's wrong?"

"Quirk exhaustion. I think it's severe."

There's a pause. "Shit." Izuku nearly twitches out of his skin, because she never swears. Soon enough, he can hear her faintly urging somebody over what he assumes to be is the police radio.

"Shouto, c'mon. Get warm." He urges his own companion as he keeps rubbing his arms. He would be trying to wake him up, but with this level of quirk exhaustion, he'd be pretty similar to being passed out, maybe a bit nonsensical. It was better to let him sleep and get a kick start on his recovery, but damn, he was not supposed to be this cold. The air isn't supposed to be this cold.

Fucking igloo.

Izuku picks up Shouto's hand, then the other, then puts them between his. He lifts them to his mouth and blows on them, rubbing them with his thumbs through his gloves. Then he remembers that he has gloves, and that he's stupid. He drops Shouto's hands and rips off his gloves, picking one up to stuff it in. Since he's completely limp, it's harder than he thought it would be. About six minutes later, with no new news from Yaoyorozu, he completes the arduous task of getting gloves on a passed-out Shouto. His arms are covered in goosebumps again, so Izuku rubs them with his palms.

Shouto's face is still. It's a little worrying, because Izuku would assume someone's teeth would be chattering right about now, because his are, but Shouto isn't overly expressive when he's conscious so why would he be when he's not?

He also knows that sometimes Shouto gets nightmares, and activates his quirk in his sleep. In the four months that they've lived together so far Izuku had witnessed multiple occasions of Shouto's sheets being charred or soaked through. Never both in one night.

Izuku feels terrible for this, knowing he'll hate himself for it later and already hating himself for it now, but he kind of wishes Shouto will have a nightmare and use his fire quirk.

Wow, look at that. He already feels terrible. It's almost as if he predicted this.

"Yaoyorozu, any updates?" He shakily asks his comm, half a second before a voice echoes through it.

"I GOT HIM!" It says, and Izuku knows it's Jirou. He rubs his numb ears and strains to hear her. "AND THE CIVILIANS! THEY'RE –"

Izuku doesn't need to hear it directly from the source. Yaoyorozu echoes, "They're out."

He wants to leap to his feet and whoop. The civilians are out. They can destroy the building. He can get Shouto to paramedics who can tell him whether his friend's just taking a really long power nap or in a coma.

But his foot's still broken, he has a bit of blood crusted over his eye, his left elbow pad reeks of metallic blood, his shoulder's still sore, he's sure he has a sizable bruise on the back of his head, his nose, ears, fingers, and toes are all throbbing with an unrelenting chill, and his partner's still sprawled limply over his legs with his hair falling away from his face and a red nose of his own.

Not to mention his friends are still in the splash zone.

He can work with that.

"Yaoyorozu, if you've got everybody, get out of the building. I'm gonna blast out. We can't stay in here much longer." Izuku says.

"Deku…" she sighs, "you both better come out alive." There's the distinct sound of feet hitting the floor. "I trust you to get yourself and Thermafrost back to Creagency safely. Don't let me down."

"Don't say that like you're saying goodbye," Izuku smiles, "I'll be here with you the whole time."

He gathers Shouto in his arms bridal-style and stands up, his injuries throbbing like fire in time with the precarious creaking of the building.

Yaoyorozu laughs. "Alright, Deku. I'll tell you when we're out."

Shouto isn't the heaviest thing that Izuku's carried. Holding him up like he was was more heavy in an emotional sense. His well-being was completely in his ungloved hands. So, he readjusts him onto his leg for a moment and puts one of his hands on the side of his face. He wishes he was awake for this. He wishes that they could bust out of this crumbling building side by side, unwavering.

But he's not.

So Izuku takes a page out of Yaoyorozu's book.

He smiles down on his roomate's face.

"Shouto?

I think I love you."

"We're out, Deku. You're all clear."

Izuku swallows, and moves his hand back under Shouto's body to support him.

"Alright. We'll be right out."

And he kicks.


End file.
